The reopening of schools in Scotland after the Christmas break should be delayed, a teaching union has demanded.
The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) claimed there are already staffing issues in classrooms because of the requirement for entire households to self-isolate for 10 days if someone tests positive for covid.
Schools will break for the planned Christmas holiday this week and pupils are due to return in the New Year.
Last January saw all classrooms shut and pupils left to complete tasks remotely as the UK entered a second national lockdown.
But Nicola Sturgeon has previously insisted that schools would only be closed again as a last resort.
It comes as the Scottish Government considers imposing even more restrictions on the public as part of its response to the sudden rise of the omicron variant.
The First Minister will make another covid statement on Tuesday afternoon after already warning the public to stay at home if possible.
Seamus Searson, general secretary of the SSTA teaching union, claimed he was already being told of schools that were not fully staffed due to the rising number of covid cases.
And he said parents were keeping their children off to ensure they did not catch the virus in the run-up to Christmas.
"At the moment, schools are struggling to keep open because of the number of teachers who are away because of the virus," he told BBC Radio Scotland.
"We need to be reasonable and say that the virus will spread inside schools.
"There somehow seems to be a notion that the virus isn't spread in school and teachers are immune."
Almost 6,000 new cases of coronavirus were reported across Scotland on Sunday, with Omicron now the dominant variant.
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